Olatunji Ololade
MATERIALISM has failed the world over. Compulsive philistines and prescient think-thanks attack grievous social problems- mostly self-inflicted – with paper bullets. They are peashooters trying to collapse Gibraltar.
In Nigeria, however, we see combustive ‘change’ pulse with lust and self-interest among political personae. But the electorate does not know better. They fall for the same ruse, repeatedly.
Both politicians and electorates are caught in a familiar cycle of political cannibalism, often enacted by characters, who attack and retreat in obsessive rhythms of victory and defeat.
The electorate has Sappho’s fever thus their suicidal instinct to self-destruct by recycling familiar tormentors in the public office via the ballot box. They have caught Olohun Iyo’s bug hence they sway to the melody of supernal choirs, and vanish to the lure of infernal conductors – or sweet-tongued politicians if you like.
The politics of domination by deceit, violence, and deep pockets is implicit in Nigerian culture, and this escalates at charged historical moments, like the present. Even in the throes of the coronavirus aka COVID-19, large segments of the electorate ignore the ravage of bad governance, and go to war, online and offline, to defend the honour of presiding oligarchs. Ultimately, they guard their tormentors’ right to keep exploiting and dominating them.
We have seen this happen in successive ‘civilian’ governments from 1999 to date. Its a function of ignorance. I would call it the ritualisation of eye and mind to witlessness.
The bêtise of such heedlessness manifests around us in real-time. The eye and mind elect narcissistic, bigoted personae as galvanizing objects, and then formalise the relation via votes at election time.
Ignorance is the first rung of the ladder leading to death. It precedes the plunge to nothingness. Nigeria must be guided by this truth through the pandemic. Our increasing vulnerability to COVID-19, for instance, is yet another manifestation of our plummet down the steep vale of ignorance.
It was ignorance that drove state governors to acquire toxic chemicals to rid the public space of COVID-19 via fumigation. Against the rule of wisdom and uncommon sense, they are dumping toxic chemicals on communities in their domain as a preventive measure and solution to COVID-19.
They conveniently forget that cleaning with simple disinfectants and providing sanitisation stations in public places present cheaper, better alternatives.
It is hilarious to see supposed state agents flaunt fumigation gizmo in exaggerated onslaughts against COVID-19 in public space. It’s about time the government understood that disinfectants are ill-suited for dispersal via fogging machines, they are solvents applied to surfaces to kill microbes argues Paul Erubami.
Rather than drown the citizenry in poisonous fumes, the governors should redirect their energies at more simplified testing, humane quarantine measures, contact-tracing, physical distancing awareness, and efficient distribution of palliatives.
Ignorance stirred the initial reluctance of the health and science ministries, to explore opportunities presented in the nation’s herbal endowments, and Madagascar’s COVID-Organics.
Prominent public functionaries revealed a source, wish that Madagascar’s herbal therapy fails at clinical trials. They are wary of losing contingency funding and lootable loans accessible via international lenders, she said.
The contingency fund of NGN984 million ($2.7 million) reportedly released to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the additional NGN6.5 billion ($18 million) mooted afterward must be closely monitored by the media and civil societies.
Likewise, the N500bn COVID-19 Crisis Intervention Fund purportedly established for the upgrade of healthcare facilities at the national and state levels, must be closely monitored to prevent fund administrators from embezzling such monies.
Right now, there are no social safety measures and intervention schemes for society’s handicapped: the deaf, blind, homeless are left to the ravage of the elements. Leprosariums, orphanages, geriatric homes, to mention a few, are ignored in ongoing intervention efforts.
Before COVID-19, Nigeria grappled with terrorism, kidnap for ransom, child and sex trafficking, armed robbery, homelessness, mental health problems, divorce, collapse, and corruption of the family unit. These are social problems requiring sustainable welfare policies but the country’s lack of a visionary and humane leadership denied the citizenry such benefits.
There is currently no social welfare programme that offers health care assistance, non-discriminatory entrepreneurial loans, food stamps, and unemployment compensation, among others to deserving citizenry divides. The absence of such initiatives wreaked untold havoc on the citizenry at the outbreak of COVID-19. Bandit youth attacked Lagos and Ogun suburbs and rural areas, robbing folk who already had too little or nothing to survive by.
While government intervention efforts focus on the poor citizenry, presumed middle-class segments have lost their jobs, suffered arbitrary salary cuts, and lack of access to welfare relief that could help them cope with the economic hardship foisted by COVID-19. There are no housing subsidies, energy and utility subsidies, and assistance for other basic services to individuals that are most affected by the pandemic, notes Peterson Ozili.
At the backdrop of these challenges, the numbers of the unemployed sky-rockets. A 2019 World Bank report shows that Nigeria created about 450,000 new jobs in 2018, partially offsetting the loss of jobs in 2017. And while over five million Nigerians entered the labour market in 2018, the number of unemployed increased by 4.9 million in 2019.
More radical estimates indicate that over 18 million youths were unemployed by the end of 2019. Many more have lost their livelihoods in the wake of COVID-19.
Recently, President Muhammadu Buhari approved the employment of 774, 000 youths as part of a Special Public Works Programme aimed at cushioning the economic effects of COVID-19. As usual, this is a knee-jerk reaction to rising unemployment and the pandemic.
Nigerians must use this crisis as an opportunity to reconstruct the power equation, redistribute social privileges, reinvigorate civil societies, and dormant economies.
The public healthcare system must be overhauled with better social safety nets and driven to earn foreign exchange. And this can never be achieved by recycling the incumbent ruling class in power, come 2023.
Something’s got to give. Renaissance hierarchies are dramatized in the noisy climax of gladiator politics. The average voter must re-emerge decisively as political personae of a renaissance Nigeria, come 2023.
He must re-emerge as the culture hero and worker of marvels: the farmer, painter, plumber, sculptor, street trader, student, unemployed graduate, and manual labourer must reprise their roles as fearless change-makers, irreconcilable to visions of them as pawns and inferior social elements.
Their task is well laid out. COVID-19 has reorganised human behaviour around survival instincts. In the ongoing duel with the pandemic, the ultimate purpose of families, states and nations, is to breathe. Its a sublime irony: man labours to breathe in an atmosphere corrupted by his labour for material wealth.
The relentless drive for profits birthed COVID-19, the nondescript virus that tamed the champions of industry, nuclear warlords, mortal destroyers of the ecosystem, political minions, and juggernauts.
In order to keep breathing at a time like this, the Nigerian voter must quit participating in heavily choreographed elections, in which the demands of corporations, individuals, and banks are paramount.
He must vie to tilt power to the citizenry divide. It’s time to take back what’s ours. As Omoyele Sowore would say, it is time to “take it back.”
But how? Slogans and scathing bromides are hardly the way to go in reclaiming Nigeria’s soul from the fangs and talons of raptorial oligarchs.
